We had a snowy day on Jan 7th and I settled down with my snuffy cold to warp my little loom. I was starting the part of the Little Looms Workshop dealing with curves and decided to work with the drawings I’ve been doing of the small shell bits I gathered on the beach shortly after Christmas. I loved their curving stripes of various oranges and had been wanting to do something with some dye samples I had. I had used various mordants with onion skins with one dye bath to produce a range of colors. So I warped the loom, made a series of simplified sketches, and wound my samples into little balls of yarn.

Getting set up on a snowy day!

There are 4 different shades of orange: a dark brown using chrome and iron, a brighter orange above that using alum, tin and iron, a lower chroma resulting from just alum and tin and finally the top two had no mordant at all, plus white. These samples were done years ago and I was pleased that not only could I find the small skeins but also my dye notes with attached samples. I was taught by very thorough teachers. Linda Berry Walker, Myrlie Misskelly and Trudy Van Stralen to name a few.
One of the reasons I wanted to do these small tapestries was to use some of these small samples.

Finished product with it’s inspiration.

I’ve learned a lot and still have a lot to learn. I like the free forms of these arcs but I’d like to gain more control over my weaving – time and practice… I also wanted to have more variety in the orange areas but felt at this stage i had enough to work with keeping all the yarns in the correct sheds. This too will get better with practice – so I may revisit this idea in the future but for now I’m pleased with the result.